Partnership Opportunities

Seeking Partnership Opportunities

We are interested in setting up partnerships with biotechnology companies. We think that these collaborations are mutually beneficial. The benefits of partnering with us include:

Access to new capabilities: This may include equipment, lab space, personnel, scientific expertise. It is faster and generally cheaper to access external resources than to build them in house.

Access to a different perspective: When faced with a challenging problem, an organization can benefit from an external perspective to avoid tunnel vision. An external partner is more likely to propose new approaches than the internal team.

Workforce development: Through a collaboration, we can train the company existing personnel. We can also help the company identify a potential hire with specific expertise.

Marketing: An association with a research university has marketing benefits that can be leveraged to support the partner marketing strategy. For example, communicating about the partnership can result in links to the company web site from domains with a lot of authority. Joint peer-reviewed publications are great marketing material demonstrating that the company science is solid. It is also possible to provide the company exposures in scientific conferences by presenting the results of our collaboration.

Use the buttons below to find a time to discuss how we can help your organization or send us an email.

Partnership Scenarios

Partnerships can take many forms depending on the needs of the corporate partner. Below are a few scenarios that may help imagine the one that will best fit your specific needs. Contact us if you want to discuss a possible partnership.

A DreamBigBio, Inc. (DBB) has raised a seed round of funding. John Smith, one of the founders, is a scientist. He needs access to a lab to collect preliminary data to achieve a milestone. DBB does not have the time or financial resources to setup a lab. Their local incubator only provides access to empty lab space. And it is full with a 12-month waiting list anyway. DBB decides to partner with us so that John Smith can work in our lab for a year. In addition to giving him access to a fully-equipped lab, we recruit two senior undergraduate students to help with his experiments. After a year, DBB has raised a series A thanks in part to the data collected by John Smith in our lab. After they setup their lab, DBB hires the two graduates who had been working with John for a year.

Rocky Mountain Biomanufucturing Inc. (RMB) is a well-established contract research organization providing biomanufacturing services. On occasions, they develop or optimize expression vectors for their clients. Optimization of gene expression is handled by Bob Cline, a molecular biologist who was trained in the late 90s. Bob has been working with RMB for 20 years. He has not kept up with recent developments in bioinformatics and synthetic biology. RMB’s CEO offers Bob to take a year-long sabbatical in our lab to refresh his technical skills. While working with us, Bob will develop a new generation of proprietary expression vectors for a new host that is gaining traction in the marketplace. He will also keep working on expression vector optimization for RMB clients. While Bob is working at CSU, RMB starts advertising that they use vector design methods from synthetic biology, which differentiates them from the competition. This leads to new engagements that they would not have secured otherwise.

BigBioPharma Inc. (BBP) is a large publicly traded biotech company. Their workflows are increasingly data-driven. They are struggling to recruit scientists with a dual background in computational and experimental biology who can coordinate the experimental and computational processes. BBP decided to partner with us to identify and train a postdoc that they intended to recruit after a couple of years. We have identified a project of mutual interest that combines experimental and computational efforts. BBP will support the postdoc for two years.

Use the buttons below to find a time to discuss a partnership best adapted to your needs or send us an email.

Partnership Mechanisms

Partnerships can be structured in two different ways depending on the partner expectations.

Master Research and Development Agreement (MRDA): This vehicle is suitable when the partner is paying for a specific research project with well-identified deliverables. The master agreement itself describes issues like confidentiality, payment terms, access to intellectual property, etc. One version of the version of the agreement provides the partner an option to rent space at CSU. The specifics of the engagement are described in one or more tasks orders that can be signed upon execution of the master agreement or can be added later.

Gift: Gifts are the preferred support mechanism when the partner is interested in supporting a general area of research without expecting any deliverable in return. For example, they can be used to support a graduate student or a post-doc.

Do you have an idea of a possible partnership? Use the button below to start the conversation or send us an email.